Thursday, July 15, 2010

The Samos 2010 Summit was organised with great success and global visibility, on July 6 – 9, in the Research and Training Institute of East Aegean - INEAG, at Campos Vourlioton, Samos. The Samos Summit was coorganised by the University of Aegean, the National Technical University of Athens and the Greek Interoperability Centre, under the auspices of European Commission / DG Information Society and Media.

With the participation of 100 high-level eGovernment experts from 20 countries, the meeting adopted the "Samos Declaration," which calls the United Nations, the European Union and the National Governments to support research on new ICT tools for citizens and governance in the coming years.

Samos Summit Participants, outside Karlovassi Town Hall

The Samos Declaration, concludes in four Grand Challenges for future ICT research:

- Collaborative model-based Governance
- Open Data for transparency and behavioral change
- Government Service Utilities for trans-national, collaborative public-private services
- The scientific foundation of the field of ICT-enabled Governance

The Summit hosted presentations of international research projects CROSSROAD, PADGETS, COCKPIT, OCOPOMO, + SPACES, UBIPOL and WEGOV, which are expected to produce innovative applications for citizens, public officials, politicians and businesses, in the coming years.

Samos Summit publicity relied primarily on the Internet: in addition to summit participants, more than 300 scientists from around the world attended via internet broadcasting. Furthermore, thousands of members of the scientific community were informed "live" for the presentations and outcome of the meeting through Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin.

The event was also covered by local and national Greek media: news papers and sites Naftemporiki, Samiaka Nea, ICT Plus, ; radio stations Armonia and Ionia as well as the Samos TVchannel presented parts of the event.

Yannis Charalabidis, assistant professor in University of Aegean and Chair of the summit, said: "The Samos Summit was an important and ambitious initiative, which was a great success – giving Samos significant visibility at international level. Congratulations to participants, colleagues, students of the University of the Aegean and the National Technical University of Athens, local authorities and citizens of our island: we showed that teamwork and positive attitude can achieve a lot. And we can still become better. "

All material and presentations of the Samos 2010 Summit, photos and the "Samos Declaration" are available at: http://samos-summit.blogspot.com/